Bloodshot (22 page)

“You’ve already expressed some hate for the government. Was that because they had your sister’s case closed?” The scowl I received wasn’t a satisfying response, so I kept pushing. “Someone went to great lengths to seal your sister’s case. Were you aware of this?” I asked, which pretty much exhausted my guesses and credible suspicions.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And what?” She drummed a set of flawless acrylic nails on the vanity table and pretended to adjust the dress around her knees.

“And you know more than that, don’t you?” I only realized it as I said it. “It’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?” I had this moment of epiphany, and there was almost nothing I could do about it, because a knock on the door interrupted us. It wasn’t the firm, secure knock of I Totally Belong Here; it was a knock of Jesus Christ Get Your Ass Out Here.

This was heartily confirmed by a bitchy tirade on the other side of the door. “Honey, all God’s children need that goddamn
dressing room, and Dave’s screaming about the electric lemonade. You going to get out here and set the bar, or am I going to tell him you’re holed up with a date?”

“Fuck off, Fanny,” Rose growled—all man, all of a sudden.

Rose swiveled, stood, and leaned the two steps across the dressing room to the door. Whipping it open, the drag queen added, “I’m having a little conversation with the police right now, if you don’t mind. I’ll be done here when I’m done here, and until then, you can piss right off, do you understand me?”

Fanny got it, but Fanny made a scene about it. “Oh fine,
sir
. You big scary
bastard
, you. I’ll pass it along, you giant fucking cock-up.”

Rose slammed the door, and under the makeup I was having a hard time not seeing Adrian, who was big and angry, and rather startlingly masculine. I questioned my pronouns as well as my personal security, for all that this was silly, I was undead, and what was he going to do, scratch my eyes out?

This stupid thought made me think of Ian, and I almost thinked myself into a panic spiral.

Rose was still standing there, hand on the back of the door, either holding it shut or holding herself upright with it. The performer was pondering something, analyzing something. Evaluating something—me, I guessed—and I was worried about where the roulette ball was going to settle.

On Rose’s left biceps I saw a shadow that had a funny shape to it, and it took me a second to figure out that I was looking at a tattoo covered in makeup. I wondered what it looked like when it was unhidden.

I wondered what Rose was going to say, and then she started talking.

“Fanny will be back in under a minute. I swear to God, I don’t have time for this.” There was no softness, feigned or otherwise in
what Rose was saying. If I hadn’t been staring at her, I would’ve assumed she was a thirty-year-old man who was royally pissed and ready to punch something.

“For what? For me?”

“For you. For this conversation. For right now. The doors open soon and I have to start the night working the bar, because our guy is out sick and there’s no one else who can do it, and if I don’t do it, I’ll blow this gig. This cover,” Rose added, almost as an afterthought.

Footsteps came clipping down the hall, and it was the sound of high heels on carpet that didn’t have any padding under it.

Rose said quickly, “Here she comes now, fresh from tattling. Look, you have to leave.”

“Not until—”

“No.
Right now
, but we can talk later. Not here. Not like this. I don’t trust it, and I don’t trust some of these people.” She waved at the door, indicating the people on the other side of it in general, maybe Fanny in particular. “And I don’t trust you, exactly, but I get why you’re holding back, and maybe we can help each other. I don’t know. But I’m willing to talk.”

“Later?”

“Later,” she said as the knocking on the dressing room door commenced afresh. “When I’m off tonight. Around the corner and down the street there’s an all-night diner. Meet me there.” The knocking grew louder and grouchier, and it was underscored by obscenities. “I won’t talk here. I can’t talk here, and you
shouldn’t
talk here.”

“Me? What do I have to do with anything?”

“Maybe plenty,” she said, eyes narrowed. She grabbed the door’s tiny hook fastener and slapped it into place, as if it could stand alone against the wrath of an impatient drag queen. She lowered her voice to something wholly unladylike and menacing when
she said, “My sister might’ve run away, but after that she was
taken
. And I know who took her, and I know
why
they took her. So you’re no cop and Bella was no runaway, and neither one of you is alive.”

Now it was my turn to be shocked into a slack-jawed drool-drip of confusion. “You think your sister’s dead?” I asked, because it was the only thing I could think to stutter.

“I’m coming in there!” announced Fanny from the other side, and she shoved against the door. The hook-lock held for the first assault, buying just enough time for Rose to lean down into my personal space.

She said, “Oh, she’s dead all right. I just want to know if she’s any deader than
you.
”

The door burst open and Fanny strolled inside with a glare and a sneer. “You’re supposed to be in the bar, asshole, and it’s my turn for the mirrors. Who the fuck is this? This the cop you’re talking to? She doesn’t look like a fucking cop. She looks like a fucking real estate agent.”

I started to say, “And you look like—” but Rose cut me off with a very large hand, pushing Fanny aside so I had room to leave. It was just as well. I couldn’t think of anything suitably catty anyway. I was in over my head in the catty department, I just knew it.

“Get out,” Rose reiterated. “Tonight. After three. Around the corner. We’ll talk.”

S
ister Rose turned back to Fanny and started swearing in Spanish, flinging her arms around like she was guiding a very flamboyant airplane onto a very bumpy runway. I squeezed out through the narrow space where the door was half blocked by their bickering bodies and shimmied out sideways into the corridor, which seemed unaccountably dark after the brilliant face-painting-worthy glare of the dressing room.

My eyes adjusted accordingly and I stumbled out down the hall until I found my way back to the foyer. There, the front doors had been opened (a few minutes early, I thought) and a couple of people had milled inside, past a smallish man wearing ordinary man-clothes. He was sitting on a bar stool that had been dragged over to the entrance, in order to check IDs.

I scooted past him with an “Excuse me” and darted back into the street, where I felt like I could breathe again.

I stood on the sidewalk and oriented myself, scanning the blocks for a twenty-four-hour diner and spotting what looked like a sign for one down at the end of the street. I made a mental note of it and went back to my car.

You may recall that I tend to keep a change of clothes in my trunk. You may also recall that among these clothes are such diverse elements as a hot skirt and heels. I didn’t intend to stick around the drag bar all night, but if I was going to hang out in this part of town, I wanted to look less like a fucking real estate agent. Because really, Fanny was right and I knew it.

I wished I had something more like party clothes handy, but there was no way in hell I was going to drive all the way back home, then all the way back out to the Poppycock Review. Not on a weekend night. I’d rather suck it up and wander around looking like … well … like a slutty real estate agent. But it was better than nothing.

Because I have literally no shame whatsoever, I changed clothes in the backseat. No one stopped to watch, which was not quite insulting and, technically, should be considered a mark in the win column. Then again, I was only changing into a skirt and swapping out shoes, so I guess I wasn’t exactly putting on a show.

When I emerged from the vehicle I looked a little more like I belonged in the neighborhood, or at least I hoped so. If nothing else, I appeared young enough that—it was to be fervently prayed—I didn’t look like a middle-aged swinger looking for a third.

And God, it was still early. I had five or six hours to kill before it’d be worth my time to stroll over to the diner. So it was a real good thing I have a secret soft spot for disco. I roamed from club to club, watching show after show, and pickup after pickup in bar after bar.

I only treated myself to one glass of wine, so I stayed plenty sober throughout the evening, even for me. And in that last hour before the end of Rose’s shift, I wended to the Poppycock Review in order to hang out as a patron and—in all honesty—make sure my new lead didn’t magically disappear in a poof of glitter and a hearty snap of her fingers. I didn’t like being put off until later, and I didn’t intend to be stood up.

By the time I returned, the Review was jumping and jam-packed.

Pre-menopausal Madonna chirped aggressively from every speaker, and the press of bodies was close, salty-smelling, and frankly delicious—so very delicious that I wondered if this was such a good idea after all. For the previous chunk of the evening I’d been crashing in bars and keeping to the edges of the social scenery as a matter of personal sanity, but this was invigorating and fun, if cramped. I hadn’t been out dancing in longer than I could remember (since disco was popular the first time around? Maybe), and although I wasn’t dressed as appropriately as I would’ve preferred, I couldn’t keep my body from moving, bouncing, lunging along with the crowd as I made my way back to the stage area.

It wasn’t really a stage, exactly. It was just a swath of the dance floor that was being forcibly cleared for the night’s grand finale. A small dyke herded swaying, bopping dancers off to the edges, underneath the balcony overhangs and up the stairs so they could dangle off the banisters and lean over the rails. Those below were splashed periodically with beer, Long Island iced tea, or other contents from drunkenly handled pitchers up above. I picked the driest spot I could reach without hurting anyone and braced myself against a support pillar to watch the proceedings—hoping they’d include Sister Rose. If she came out to perform, I’d know she hadn’t flown the coop while I was out.

I’m not sure why I was so confident she hadn’t taken off, except
that she seemed to know something about me—and by extension, perhaps about her baby sister’s condition before she vanished. If I’d played my cards right, Rose would be dying to know what I knew, just like I was dying to know what
she
knew. Maybe we’d both come out of it disappointed, or maybe we wouldn’t.

But my desire to see Rose perform
wasn’t
disappointed. She was announced as the next girl up, and all the late-night, drunk-as-hell partiers retreated the last few feet out of the performance area from respect or fear. I stayed where I was, except that I took a half step back, up onto a short, low pedestal against which the pillar was set. It gave me about three inches of height I wouldn’t otherwise have, and that, coupled with my obscenely tall shoes, let me see pretty much everything.

“Everything” consisted at first of “not much.” The lights dimmed, and then changed color before exploding afresh into vibrant shades of gold, blue, and scarlet. From the DJ booth a swift, naughty beat began to blare, and with it came a deeply fey voice that announced, “Ladies, and gentlemen, and everyone in between … we’re saving the best for last here at the Poppycock Review, and you know what
that
means, don’t you?”

The crowd announced in raucous stereo, “Pussy Party!”

And I wondered what the hell I’d gotten myself into, until the spotlight appeared and the song began. Don’t ask me why I recognized it; I’ll only lie to you. But suffice it to say, it was “Pussy” by an old band called the Lords of Acid. And then, oh yes—there was Sister Rose in the spotlight. And running a little late, the DJ said, “That’s right! And leading tonight’s Pussy Party, I give you, Sister Rose!”

A brief and hearty cheer went up, and then was silenced as Rose stepped into the clearing and began to lip-sync.

Rose wasn’t wearing much, but the whole ensemble sparkled from strap to strap. It looked like the skeleton of a beauty queen’s
apparel in the swimsuit competition, done up in silver, with a tiny hint of beaded fringe down south, where it counted. But fringe or no fringe, I was impressed with the tuck-job. It was a tuck-job that made me feel less odd about calling a six-foot-plus man a “she” in my interior monologue. It reinforced the very shiny illusion, but so help me God, there was nothing to be done about her legs.

Don’t get me wrong—they went for miles, and the muscle definition was absolutely to die for … but you’d never mistake them for belonging to a woman, unless we’re talking the She Hulk. Still, this observation did not prevent me from feeling a touch of envy. If Mattel ever makes a Drag Queen Barbie, they damn well ought to pattern that doll’s proportions after Sister Rose. Those were legs that could crack a horse’s ribs, and they knew how to move.

They scissored and stretched, and banged apart, dropping Rose’s crotch down to a floor-level split that
I
would’ve considered too painful to attempt, but she never dropped the beat or the verse. Rose grabbed the nearest rail and scaled it with the ease of the world’s most glamorous chimpanzee, slinging herself easily and gloriously in time to the music—and all the while never flashing even a hint of anything incriminating.

If I seem fixated on this point, well, I’d never seen a drag show this up close and personal before, and it fascinated me. The pageantry, the artifice, the unapologetic pretense … It was effusive and charming, albeit loud as hell. By this point in the night, I was wishing for earplugs and wondering if my unnaturally sensitive ears would ever truly recover, but I couldn’t muster any real concern about it.

Rose’s big black wig was outfitted with big faux gemstones that caught the lights and hurled them around like lasers, and her darkly painted lips contorted themselves around lyrics that only barely pretended to be a double entendre. If there was any such thing as a single entendre, this was it.